David Stephenson is a retired manufacturing engineer from Detroit. His poems have most recently appeared in Shot Glass Journal, The Lyric, Plainsongs, and Snakeskin. His second collection, Wall of Sound, was published in 2022. He also the editor Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, and on-line journal for poetry with a strong musical element.
Plumbing Van
A plumber on a home improvement show
gave viewers a tour of his elaborate van,
a walk-in type lined elbow-to-elbow
with shelves and peg-boards following a plan
he had developed based on decades spent
unclogging toilets and re-piping sinks,
still subject to ongoing refinement
involving pencil sketches and deep thinks.
As he explained the rationale behind
the placement of each tool and part, he seemed
pleased to display the workings of his mind
to an audience beyond all he had dreamed;
the joy of details snapping into place,
of figuring it all out, lit up his face.
At Sir George’s
My first job was as a busboy at
a restaurant called Sir George’s Royal Buffet
with waitresses two grades ahead in school
who wore a lot of makeup and perfume.
I was mesmerized and stupified.
By rule the waitresses shared their tips with me,
and at shift’s end, when they all counted up,
they would often mention customers
who’d been surly and left a measly tip,
shaking their heads and scowling as they spoke
like truck drivers discussing a flat tire,
proposing various stock scenarios
to explain his cheapskate behavior,
spinning entire presumed biographies
featuring a menial, low-paying job
where he gets regularly pushed around
and a humiliating lifelong lack
of romantic success, from puberty on,
before dismissing him as a pitiful.
I’ve been a big tipper ever since.
Cement Truck
Turning right out of the cement yard
it arcs into a lurching, creeping roll,
puffing smoke and plainly working hard,
bent beneath the slowly spinning bowl
that stirs the heavy soup of sand and lime
with which it’s charged, the contracted payload
it will pour out at the appointed time
into some awaiting form or mold.
Its beauty lies not in its elegance
or subtlety, but in its deft design,
in how tugboat and wheelbarrow elements
are artfully adapted and combined
to raise this glorious ruckus in the street;
not in the abstract, but the concrete.
Rickie Dale
We never met my father’s family,
but after Dad died, my younger brother
searched through records and found his father’s grave,
and we decided we should visit it.
The graveyard he was in was a flat field
next to a railroad crossing, with no trees.
Next to the old man’s stone was a small one
for Rickie Dale, a son, who had been born
when my father was three, and who had died
just ten years later. He was our uncle,
and his stone was a clue or puzzle piece.
Our older brother’s middle name was Dale.
We stood there looking at that chiseled name,
knowing it meant something, just not what,
beyond the normal sorrow of the past.
I looked around at all the other graves,
and thought of all the heartaches they must hold,
and of the secrets I will take to mine.
Then we put a pebble on each stone
and walked away, just as a train rolled by.
Fortuna
She was the Roman goddess of luck and chance,
wandering around blindfolded all day,
spinning her little wheel of happenstance
to spread good and bad luck along the way.
If there’s a local temple, I should go
and light a candle, since I’ve always been
ridiculously lucky, even though
I’m not the world’s most sparkling specimen.
That’s what happens when you dish out luck
using coin flips and dice, casino-style;
good people inevitably get stuck
with endless terrible misfortunes, while
the fair-to-middling prosper and grow old.
Maybe she should take off her blindfold.
The Galway Review 